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In a remarkable shift toward more genuine transparency, NASA has decided to begin providing any and all published research to the public at no charge whatsoever. Indeed, a public web portal will be launched that will enable virtually anyone in the world with an internet connection to access NASA reports. In truth, this is merely an update to NASA’s longstanding commitment to publicizing NASA-funded research which has been published in peer-reviewed journals.

According to NASA Deputy Administrator Dava Newman, “At NASA, we are celebrating this opportunity to extend access to our extensive portfolio of scientific and technical publications. Through open access and innovation we invite the global community to join us in exploring Earth, air, and space.” The web portal is set to be known as PubSpace, and all research and reports should be easily searchable and smartly organized.

NASA Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan argues that, “Making our research data easier to access will greatly magnify the impact of our research. As scientists and engineers, we work by building upon a foundation laid by others.” There are already thousands of studies and articles in the database, and this number is expected to balloon more and more as the efforts for transparency continue to ratchet-up.

The research which is already online covers anything from exercising in space to the possibility of life on Titan, and there is even data regarding the precise risk of miscarriage for flight attendants who are exposed to more cosmic radiation that the general population because they are frequently higher above ground and closer to Space. The argument can be made that all of this info should have been available to the public in the first place—instead of being locked behind paywalls—but it’s unlikely that there will be more criticism than praise overall.

Yet, as alluded to, NASA has made it clear that documents containing patents and other private information will never be available for viewing (which most people should be able to understand and accept). Back in 2013, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policydictated that NASA would need to be more transparent in the imminent future. Now that the future is finally the present, countless human beings around the world are free to utilize this otherworldly data—and perhaps provide ground-breaking insights of their own.

The vast majority of the public has been upset for years that companies control so much academic publishing; so much so that some researchers have been uploading their findings directly to the internet in order to combat both the criticism and the injustice. There haven’t been any major issues with this, but some people have uploaded data illegally: hopefully PubSpace will reduce or end this practice. It’s expected that Europe may begin to publish their Space research in similar ways, although nothing concrete has been announced.

As per NASA Deputy Chief Scientist Gale Allen, “This’ll be the first time that NASA’s had all of their publications in one place, so we estimate what our publication rate is for the agency, but this will actually be able to tell us what it is. And we’ll be able to show even further what we’re doing with taxpayer dollars.”

Snow is falling in northern Florida thanks to moist air from the Gulf of Mexico intersecting with the frigid cold hanging over the eastern U.S. The impending storm will get really organized and march up toward the Mid-Atlantic this evening, where there are rare blizzard watches already in effect. By late tonight or early tomorrow, snow, storm surge, and powerful winds will smack the Northeast.

Along the way, this extratropical cyclone will undergo “explosive bombogenesis.” Or, in less nerdy terms, it will bomb out. And that has got people on edge.

In some ways, the freakout is warranted. This is shaping up to be a massive, dangerous storm that could fell records and cause widespread power outages. Snow in Florida is really, deeply weird and wrong. The cold air rushing in after the storm passes could be deadly. But let’s step back for a sec and talk about what’s actually going on.

In simple terms, bombogenesis describes what happens when a storm’s central pressure drops 24 millibars in 24 hours. The lower the pressure, the more intense the storm.

Those types of rapid drops can happen in hurricanes, but only extratropical cyclones—storms that have cold air at their core—technically qualify as bomb cyclones. That means you generally only get weather bombs in winter, and often in coastal areas where cold land meets relatively warm ocean water. The bigger the difference between warm and cold air masses, the bigger the potential for bombogenesis.

“The contrast between the warm and cold air gives you an indication of the energy available to intensify an extratropical cyclone,” Andrea Lang, a meteorologist at the University of Albany, told Earther. “In this case, large contrasts in temperature between Arctic air currently over the Northeast and warm Atlantic waters suggest the potential for an intense cyclone.”

This week’s bomb storm could see pressure drop an unbelievable 45 millibars in 24 hours, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration model ensemble. It’s forecast to bottom out around 950 millibars, a central pressure typically associated with Category 3 hurricanes (though this storm will not bring Category 3 winds).

While this storm could be one for the record books, storms bombing out isn’t that rare. Jonathan Martin, a meteorology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told BuzzFeed that you can expect about 10 of these types of storms across the northern hemisphere in any given winter. In the Northeast, many storms that bomb out take the form of nor’easters, winter storms that have their strongest winds out of the northeast. In Europe, they’re usually wind storms. Elsewhere like the Bering Sea, they’re just really nasty storms.

Scientists have been throwing around some combination of the terms “bomb,” “bombogenesis,” “weather” ,and “climatological” since the 1940s. They somewhat entered the mainstream lexicon in 1980. That year, MIT professors Fred Sanders and John Gyakumpublished the amazingly-titled study“Synoptic-Dynamic Climatology of the ‘Bomb.’”

It’s one of the first papers to deconstruct the process of bombogenesis. Sanders attributes the focus on rapidly dropping pressure in storms to Tor Bergeron, a Swedish meteorologist who also gave us our working theory of how precipitation forms in the 1930s.

Of course popular lexicon is relative. We’re talking about an academic journal after all. The term “weather bomb” was batted around here and there but really got traction in 1993 according to Google Books search results that Barbara Mayes Boustead, a National Weather Service meteorologist in the Omaha/Valley office and history buff, sent to Earther.

“[It] makes me think that maybe the March Superstorm led to some significant increase in usage of the phrase,” she said.

That 1993 storm was dubbed the “Storm of the Century,” though it’s since been eclipsed by other winter storms in terms of intensity, including a potent 1996 storm (which may also be why references to weather bombs increased throughout the 1990s, though it’s unclear what happened in the 2000s).

Image: Google Ngrams

So yeah, this whole cyclone bomb thing has been a known quantity for a while in the meteorological world.

That doesn’t mean this storm won’t be bad, or that you shouldn’t be prepared for power outages, especially considering the bone-rattling cold that will follow. But make sure to allocate your freakout between meteorological and existential threatsaccordingly.

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The science supporting the efficacy of magnesium for major depression and other psychiatric disorders, testing for magnesium deficiency, and which forms and dosages are most effective.

Depression, a life-threatening psychiatric disorder, lies at the confluence of biochemical, hormonal, immunological, and neurodegenerative variables, which intersect to generate the pro-inflammatory state with which depression is associated. A major public health issue, depression is estimated to become one of the top three contributors to the global burden of diseases within a few years. Not only does depression consume a sizable portion of health care expenditures, but it is considered to be an independent risk factor for metabolic, cardiovascular, and neuropsychiatric disorders (1).

Current treatments are predicated upon a misguided serotonin theory of depression, and are accompanied by a laundry list of deleterious side effects ranging from sexual dysfunction to homicidality (2, 3, 4). Antidepressant medications likewise significantly increase the risk of all-cause mortality, or death from any cause, as well as heart disease, leading researchers to deem this class of pharmaceuticals as harmful to the general population (5). This, in combination with data indicating that antidepressants are clinically equivalent to placebo, render them an unfavorable option (6), especially considering that they offer little in the way of resolving the root cause.

Magnesium: The Miracle Mineral

Rather than resorting to psychotropic drugs, it would be prudent to explore whether magnesium (Mg) supplementation improves depression, since this essential mineral is implicated in the pathophysiology of this disorder. Magnesium may be indeed branded as miraculous given its essentiality as a cofactor to over three hundred enzymatic reactions (7). It is second only to potassium in terms of the predominant intracellular cations, or ions residing in cells that harbor a positive charge (7).

Magnesium is fundamentally involved in protein production, synthesis of nucleic acids, cell growth and division, and maintenance of the delicate electrolyte composition of our cells (7). It also imparts stability to the membranes of the energy factories of our cells called mitochondria (7). As articulated by researchers, “The physiological consequences of these biochemical activities include Mg’s central roles in the control of neuronal activity, cardiac excitability, neuromuscular transmission, muscular contraction, vasomotor tone, and blood pressure” (7).

The biological effects of magnesium are widespread. When deficient, magnesium is correlated with systemic inflammation. Not only does magnesium sufficiency promote cardiovascular health, relaxing the smooth muscles that comprise blood vessels and preventing high levels of vascular resistance that cause hypertension, but it also plays a role in musculoskeletal health and prevents sarcopenia, osteoporosis, and fractures (8). Magnesium is essential to regulation of sleep (9) and vitamin D metabolism (10) as well as neural plasticity and cognitive function.

However, food processing and industrial agriculture, including monoculture crop practices and the use of magnesium-devoid fertilizers, have led to soil erosion and depletion of magnesium content in our food (7). Magnesium is likewise removed from most drinking water supplies, rendering magnesium deficiency an inevitability (11). As such, our daily intake of magnesium has steadily declined from 500 milligrams (mg) per day to 175 mg per day (7). The nutrient-poor, energy-dense dietary patterns which have come to dominate the industrialized landscape are also insufficient in the fiber-rich fruits and vegetables which contain magnesium.

Animal Studies Propose a Role for Magnesium in Depression

Preliminary animal studies pointed to a role of magnesium in depression, as depletion of magnesium in the diet of mice lead to enhanced depression- and anxiety-related behavior such as increased immobility time in the forced swim test (12). In the forced swim test, a common assay for examining depression-like behavior in rodents, the animal is confined to a container filled with water and observed as it attempts to escape. The time in which the animal exhibits immobility is used as a barometer of despair, indicating that the animal has succumbed to a fate of drowning (1).

This model is confirmed by studies showing that administering substances with antidepressant properties such as Hypericum perforatum, also known as St. John’s Wort, can significantly decrease the time the animal spends without locomotor activity (12). In addition, the time the animal spends immobilized is influenced by many of the factors that are changed as a consequence of depression in humans, such as drug-withdrawal-induced anhedonia, impaired sleep, and altered food consumption (1).

Human Studies Confirm the Role of Magnesium in Depression

There is a paucity of research on the influence of specific micronutrients in depression and results are inconsistent, but several studies have revealed low serum magnesium in this mood disorder. It is well-documented, for example, that dietary magnesium deficiency in conjunction with stress can lead to neuropathologies and symptoms of psychiatric disorders. Researchers echo this sentiment, stating that, “Dietary deficiencies of magnesium, coupled with excess calcium and stress may cause many cases of other related symptoms including agitation, anxiety, irritability, confusion, asthenia, sleeplessness, headache, delirium, hallucinations and hyperexcitability” (11, p. 362).

The Hordaland Health study in Western Norway illustrated an inverse association between standardized energy-adjusted magnesium intake and depression scores, meaning that people who consumed less magnesium had higher rates of depression (13). When the serum and cerebrospinal fluid of acutely depressed patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder or bipolar patients in a depressive episode were compared to healthy controls, the calcium to magnesium ratio was found to be elevated in the former (14). Calcium and magnesium are minerals which antagonize one another and compete for absorption, since each of these minerals is a divalent cation (a positive ion with a valence of two). Suicidality, one of the primary manifestations of severe depression, is accompanied by low cerebrospinal fluid levels of magnesium despite normal calcium levels, lending credence to the role of magnesium in positive emotionality (15).

A formulation of magnesium aspartate hydrochloride known as Magnesiocard has been shown to invoke mood-stabilizing effects in patients with severe rapid cycling bipolar disorder in one open study label (16). In half of the patients treated, this magnesium preparation had results equivalent to lithium, the standard of care for this patient population, such that the researchers suggested: “The possibility that Magnesiocard could replace or improve the efficacy of lithium as a preventive treatment of manic-depressive illness merits further clinical investigation” (16, p. 171). When used as an adjunctive therapy in severe, therapy-resistant mania, magnesium sulphate infusions significantly reduced the use of lithium, benzodiazepines and neuroleptics, so much so that the researchers concluded that it “may be a useful supplementary therapy for the clinical management of severe manic agitation” (17, p. 239).

In another randomized trial of elderly patients with type 2 diabetes and magnesium deficiency, elemental magnesium administered at 450 mg per day was found to have equivalent efficacy to 50 mg of the antidepressant drug Imipramine in treating depressive symptoms (18). Magnesium citrate taken at 300 mg per day has likewise been shown to decrease depression and other symptoms in patients with fibromyalgia as indicated by significant decreases in the fibromyalgia impact questionnaire (FIQ) and Beck depression scores (19).

Data also indicate that supplementation with 360 mg of magnesium administered to women with premenstrual syndrome (PMS) three times a day in the second half of the cycle is effective for so-called negative affect and other premenstrual-related mood symptoms (20). Lastly, intramuscular magnesium sulphate administered every week for six weeks has been proven to be effective in improving emotional state and other parameters in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) (21).

Mechanism of Action for Antidepressant Effects of Magnesium

According to researchers, “Biological systems discussed to be involved in the pathophysiology of affective disorders and the action of mood stabilizing drugs are affected by Mg, such as the activity of the hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenocortical (HPA) system, corticotropin releasing factor (CRF)-, GABA- and glutamatergic (via NMDA receptors) neurotransmission and several transduction pathways including protein kinase C” (12). Not only that, but magnesium elicits similar effects on nocturnal hormonal secretion and sleep brain waves to lithium salts, which are used as a treatment modality for bipolar disorder, supporting the role of magnesium as a mood stabilizer (22).

Magnesium operates as an agonist, or a stimulatory molecule, for γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptors (22). GABA is the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system. By binding to the GABA receptor and replicating the effects of GABA, magnesium may alleviate anxiety. Magnesium may also elicit its antidepressant effects by acting as an inorganic antagonist of N-methyl-d-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptor function (Poleszak et al., 2007). Receptor antagonists are ligands, or substances, which bind to a receptor but inhibit its activity rather than activating it. NMDA receptors, which occur on the surface of nerve cells, are activated in part by glutamate, one of the excitatory amino acids in the brain.

Researchers state that, “Dysfunction of NMDA receptors seems to play a crucial role in the neurobiology of disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, ischemic stroke, anxiety and depression,” such that, “ligands interacting with different sites of NMDA receptor complex are widely investigated as potential agents for the treatment of a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders” (22). In fact, drug inhibitors at the NMDA receptor complex, such as ketamine, demonstrate antidepressant effects (23, 24), but also induce such severe side effects that their clinical utility is limited (31). Magnesium, on the other hand, may have a similar mechanism of action by interfering with NMDA receptor activation without the adverse consequences of drug-induced NMDA receptor blockade (25).

Recent Study Proves Efficacy of Oral Magnesium for Depression

A recent open-label, randomized, cross-over trial was conducted in outpatient primary care clinics on 126 adults diagnosed with depression (26). During the intervention, 248 mg of elemental magnesium chloride per day, obtained from four 500 mg tablets, was administered for six weeks and compared to six weeks of no treatment, and subjects were evaluated for changes in depressive symptoms (26).

Magnesium administration results in clinically significant improvements in scores on both the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), a validated measure of the severity of depression and response to treatment, as well as the Generalized Anxiety Disorders-7 (GAD-7), a sensitive self-reported screening tool for severity of anxiety disorders (26). Impressively, results appeared in as little as two weeks, representing the dramatic improvement that nutrient restoration can facilitate (26). Impressively, however, magnesium exerted anti-depressant effects regardless of baseline magnesium level. It also exhibited efficacy independent of the gender, age, or baseline severity of depression of subjects, as well as their use of antidepressant medications (26). The authors of the study conclude, “Magnesium is effective for mild-to-moderate depression in adults. It works quickly and is well tolerated without the need for close monitoring for toxicity” (26).

Populations At Risk for Magnesium Deficiency

Half of the population of the United States was found to consume less than the recommended amount of magnesium when estimated a decade ago (27). Not only is magnesium lost with certain medical conditions, but this mineral is excreted as a consequence of biological activities such as sweating, urinating, and defecating as well as excess production of stress hormones (7, 11). In addition, because low magnesium has been correlated with various disease states, increasing magnesium status may mitigate risk of these diseases.

While the first inclination of some physicians may be to test magnesium levels for an objective parameter of deficiency, the widely used serum or plasma magnesium does not accurately reflect magnesium levels stored in other tissues (28, 29). In addition, both this hematological index of magnesium status, referred to as total magnesium, and the erythrocyte magnesium level, indicative of the levels of magnesium inside red blood cells, are not negatively affected until severe magnesium deprivation has occurred (7). Therefore, these testing methodologies are not accurate enough to catch preliminary or subclinical magnesium deficiency.

As elucidated by the researchers, “Over-the-counter magnesium can be offered as an alternative therapy to those patients hesitant to begin antidepressant treatment and is easily accessible without a prescription” (26). Because the soil is no longer enriched in magnesium, supplementation may be warranted. Organic salts of magnesium, including the acetate, ascorbate, aspartate, bicitrate, gluconate, and lactate forms are more soluble and biologically active over the magnesium mineral salts such as magnesium oxide, magnesium carbonate, magnesium chloride, and magnesium sulfate (7).

However, case studies have shown remarkably rapid recovery from major depression, in less than seven days, when magnesium glycinate and magnesium taurinate are administered at dosages of 125 to 300 mg with each meal and at bedtime (11). Magnesium threonate may also be explored as a therapeutic option, as it may have better penetrance of the blood brain barrier and restore neurological levels of magnesium. This form, which is delivered directly to the brain, may improve cerebral signaling pathways and synaptic connections between nerve cells as well as support learning and memory, although the studies have been conducted in animal models (30).

Researchers report that magnesium is usually effective for treating depression in general use, and that comorbid conditions occurring in these case studies, including “traumatic brain injury, headache, suicidal ideation, anxiety, irritability, insomnia, postpartum depression, cocaine, alcohol and tobacco abuse, hypersensitivity to calcium, short-term memory loss and IQ loss were also benefited” by magnesium supplementation (11, p. 362). Barring abnormal kidney function, the Institute of Medicine sets the upper tolerable limit for intake at 350 mg of elemental magnesium per day, but there are few adverse side effects documented unless consumed in inordinate doses (26).

Before changing your medication or nutraceutical regimen, always consult a functional or integrative medical doctor for contraindications. However, given the benign nature of magnesium supplementation and the ubiquity of magnesium insufficiency, depressedpatients should be offered this as a first line strategy alongside a holistic root-cause resolution approach to treating depression

It’s become a common question to ask if someone is anti- or pro-vaccination. With heavy arguments on either side and truths and lies at every turn, the controversy surrounding the topic seems only to heighten with each passing year. So when researchers find valuable information that is for or against vaccinations, it’s worth reading up.

Over the last 50 years, we’ve seen a devastating rise in brain disorders like Autism, ADHD, and major depressive disorders — a phenomenon that, understandably, has people searching for answers, particularly those directly affected. In this regard, an overwhelming amount of parents have reported that their children went from being seemingly healthy to suddenly suffering from disorders like Autism or ADHD as a result of vaccinations.

Now a team of researchers from the Yale School of Medicine and Penn State College of Medicine have lent further weight to many of these parents’ words. The study, which analyzed five years’ worth of private health insurance data on children ages 6-15, discovered that young people vaccinated in the previous three to 12 months were much more likely to be diagnosed with certain neuropsychiatric disorders than their non-vaccinated counterparts.

The study raises more questions among an already growing list regarding whether over-vaccination can cause immunological and neurological damage in vulnerable children. The research was published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, Jan. 19.

Over 95,000 children in the database that were analyzed were found to have one of seven neuropsychiatric disorders: anorexia nervosa, anxiety disorder, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and tic disorder. The children with these disorders were measured against those without such disorders, as well as children with two other conditions unrelated to vaccination: open wounds and broken bones.

The control subjects without brain disorders were matched with subjects based on age, geographic location, and gender. The researchers found, as they had imagined they would, that broken bones and open wounds had no association with vaccinations worth noting. Additionally, new cases of major depression, bipolar disorder, or ADHD showed no noteworthy link with vaccinations.

The study did find, however, that children who had been vaccinated were 80% more likely to be diagnosed with anorexia and 25% more likely to be diagnosed with OCD than those who had not been vaccinated. Furthermore, vaccinated children had a higher risk of being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and with tics compared to the controls.

“This pilot epidemiologic analysis implies that the onset of some neuropsychiatric disorders may be temporally related to prior vaccinations in a subset of individuals,” the researchers wrote. “These findings warrant further investigation, but do not prove a causal role of antecedent infections or vaccinations in the pathoetiology of these conditions.”

They also caution that their research should by no means serve as a deciding factor for whether or not people should vaccinate their children. “Given the modest magnitude of these findings in contrast to the clear public health benefits of the timely administration of vaccines in preventing mortality and morbidity in childhood infectious diseases, we encourage families to maintain vaccination schedules according to CDC guidelines,” they said.